To think £6,000 a year energy bills are completely unsustainable

[Butterflyfluff]

Following on from this thread but quite unbelievably the projected figure has gone from £4,200 to £6,000 now.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4607670-to-think-that-very-few-people-can-manage-ps4200-energy-bills?page=40

Where will this all end?

Exactly this. Well said

I am worried about this too.

We moved to a house that had prepayment meters. It took A YEAR for us to manage to get normal meters put in and we didn't have to prove we could afford it, had good credit etc. It was just extremely fucking difficult to get sn energy company out to get rid of them. In the meantime it cost an absolute fortune.

It's fundamentally morally wrong that prepay meters have higher charges.

Are you seriously saying you'd kill your family? What a frightening post!

I’m very worried about Christmas. So sad for the kids because we won’t be able to put the lights up outside. But my main worry is that my husband is sticking his head in the sand. He’s refusing to cut back on energy usage, shouting at me for turning the tv off at the wall etc. And he refuses to tell his (wealthier than us) family that we’ll only be doing gifts for kids. Because he finds it embarrassing. He’d rather buy his mum a socially acceptable gift that cost an expected amount, while our children shiver with the heating turned off. He insists that he has to have a certain quality of life, he can’t possibly cut back on basics like heating. I said yes but how the fuck can you afford that?! He says he’s a civilised person and he refuses to live in a facsimile of North Korea. He’s an absolute twat.

Your DH isn't the only one in denial. I am surrounded by them. It's like watching rome burn.

This winter is going to be hard. I’m obsessively thinking about what we can cut down on and looking for a better job every day and thinking about any side huddle possible to make up this shortfall. My bills are predicted at £500 a month. I have a baby and a child who really feels the cold. I can’t imagine letting the kids go cold. But, as someone who doesn’t support the billions going to Ukraine, thought the hysteria over Covid and locking down the country, paying healthy people to stay home, spending billions on track and trace was insane I’m now finding it really hard to have an ounce of sympathy for anyone else. I feel completely detached from the country & it’s struggles. It was obvious that there were going to be horrific financial consequences to covid and getting involved in Ukraine but I was called a heartless granny killing conspiracy theorists. The British pensioners we trashed the economy and social fabric to ‘save’ from an illness with a 99% survival rate will freeze to death this winter. There will be a lot of rich people, arms dealers and ppe suppliers with our tax money that could have been sent offsetting these bills. If you told anyone to ‘stay the fuck at home’ or said ‘of it saves just one life’ then this is on you as much as the government.

Lockdown was necessary, broadly speaking, and therefore furlough of some type was necessary. Sunak designed a poor system in haste, however, due to government failure to plan - against civil service advice.

@carefullycourageous I don’t agree at all, it’s the most colossal policy failure born of hysteria and media hype. We are all going to pay for it for a long time and in twenty years we will look back on the destruction wrought with horror. Economy, education, excess deaths in the young, the end of the NHS as we knew it. This winter is the first chickens coming home to roost. Hope everyone enjoyed that clapping though.

If one acknowledges the economic and societal impact of just letting COVID run in the lockdown one period, I don't think a fully open system could have been maintained. It wasn't really possible. Furlough in the UK was disproportionately expensive and poorly designed due to the rush.

Mycat you make good points re pandemic response, although I do think we are more implicated in outcome in Ukraine ie support is in line with our interests too, and west / NATO also joining in

But without spending so much in first instance we could use more to help now against global pressures

It is worth noting that NHS collapse is also due to long term underinvestment, lack of staff and ongoing high COVID admissions.

Taking into account their previous performance.... it sounds quite good! LOL

I just want general elections and the new goverment to action urgently.
I do not trust this lot with my life.

I do not trust this lot with my life.
100% agree with this feeling.

We are already paying over 6k a year. It's horrific. It's literally wiping out all our savings and we've cut right back. I honestly despair of this country. Its been one massive, depressing shit show for over a decade. The extremely right wing press, awful government, pay freeze, brexit, Boris, pandemic response, wasted billions, decimation of the NHS, awful down grading of our educational system, soaring crime rates, misogyny, racism, involvement in ukraine.... there just doesn't seem to be any end. I'm pretty mentally strong but even I'm starting to suffer. I really feel for anyone who is feeling vulnerable, scared and angry.

I'm angry at idiots who voted (and continue to vote in) the tories. I'm angry at the fat cat company owners. Just so angry all the time.

There are some people getting extremely rich because of this war in Ukraine, these people probably vote Tory.

The entire UK infrastructure is collapsing after years of austerity and all for nothing except ideology. Now, what is most puzzling is that without this infrastructure businesses themselves won't be able to operate. The very people this ideology serves will themselves be cutting their own throats. Such is the contradictions of capitalism. The state needs to maintain certain essential infrastructure in order for businesses to operate. Sick workers, workers who lack transport, or too poor to reproduce themselves as value creating worker bees, or too poor to literally reproduce, consumers too poor to consume or dead of starvation can not consume. And yet this bunch of posh boys whose mates sell arms and their snake oil PPE mates continue to create a slave ghetto. And to what actual end.

Reading some of the comments above. Something the goverment can do straight away: making law that pre- payment meters have the same charge per unit that the billed supplies. This costs nothing and takes no time to sort at all.

@carefullycourageous the NHS is a side issue though, as horrific as it is. I still don’t agree. Pils and bil are doctors. Say they never knew it quieter then during covid. I gave birth in an empty maternity ward during the winter lock down. Worst care of all births. No visitors, no advocacy they could do what they wanted. Dread to think how it was for the elderly.
One of my kids was admitted to peads during lock down one. Again, the hospital was empty. We did catch covid there though. We did protect the NHS for a few months, in the process destroyed the economy and now we are watching it burn after we kicked the can down the road a bit.

For me it’s the wealth transfer. Just as money is now going to energy companies, massive amounts were given to Serco, PPE suppliers, big businesses, people in their twenties and thirties who were at negligible risk of covid to have bbq’s and bake banana bread and now to Ukraine when this money was earned by British people, taken off us in the form of tax and now is not being used to help British people who will struggle and suffer.

And yet that is where we find ourselves. This is not democracy. Our freedom of speech is being eradicated through various laws and the imposition of 'politically correct' speech which directly effects critical thinking, our right to protest removed, and the gerrymandering of the Tory's to ensure its almost impossible to dispose of them coupled with party leaders who believe they are above the law.

Never trust your life to someone who is unaccountable to you.

I live in France.
This year was presidential elections so no chance that Macron would have allowed a high energy price rise.
Also EDF was 80% owned by the government but has now been completely nationalised.
My electricity bill has risen by €15 per month this year.
I’m not sure what will happen next year but we mostly burn wood for our heating so we won’t be cold.
Our wood is also much cheaper than the uk being €65 per m3. 8 m3 will see us through winter. And as we bought the wood a month ago it’s all paid for.
I’m seriously considering moving my elderly parents over for winter so they won’t have huge heating bills.

Even on these boards. Watching people post about where they should go on holiday next year, as if life is going to continue as normal. I find it very stressful that people are pretending nothing is wrong. Like, am I imagining all of this?

If you have over £1000 in savings every month you should theoretically be fine. There are probably a lot of people who fit into that category. I find it stressful because I am planning to upsize by next year;otherwise I would be fine. On Mumsnet I wouldn't assume those people aren't in that category given Mumsnet 'middle-class reputation '; but for people IRL, I can guess that they don't fit in that category...

It's going to be interesting to see how many just ask for the £400 to be refunded. I believe that the rules are that they have to reimburse if you ask unless there is good reason.

You’re right holiday threads usually get a lot of posts although the contrast between rl and mn probably depends on the area

We recently had a week in central London and it was crazy how packed it all was and the shows the same. It painted a contrast to media. Although of course many people will be finding things hard and harder still so some holidays will stop

There are countries which were far more strict than us and where inflation is running at half of us- Israel and Singapore. Both small countries with few natural resources so they import a lot. Every country in the world has experienced covid (and lockdown and furlough) but we have the highest inflation rate in the G7. That is us, not covid.

I’m not surprised people are going out/booking holidays. Inflation means the value of the money you have will be eroded anyway - better to spend it now while it’s worth something and enjoy it than hoard it to end up spending it on bills further down the line. Those people saying “they can’t take what I haven’t got” are right in effect - and the sheer number of people who will go into debt with their energy company or default on payments means the penalties to doing so will have to end up being watered down.